Just when Judge Clarence Thomas looked to be a shoo-in for
Senate confirmation, someone with the Senate Judiciary Committee
leaked an affidavit from Anita Hill charging Thomas with sexual
harassment. If, as suspected, Democrats did the leaking, it could
clearly be characterized as hardball politics or playing dirty.

But when network television covered the hearings live over
the Columbus Day weekend, Democrats were not subjected to tough
questioning about their possible role in the leak, or how
committing this crime was a new low in playing dirty. Instead,
reporters accused the Republican committee members of playing hardball
politics, while criticizing the Democrats for not being tough
enough on Thomas, a MediaWatch Study has
documented. The study covered all ABC, CBS and NBC news
broadcasts (both live coverage and normal shows) between the
start of the hearings at 10 AM EDT on Friday, October 11 through
the Wednesday, October 16 morning programs. The study also
covered all CNN and PBS live coverage, plus CNN's World News.
The amount of time devoted to live coverage varied: CNN and PBS
showed it all while CBS, which cut out for baseball Friday night and
for football on Saturday and Sunday, offered the least.

In total, the five networks' anchors, reporters and
affiliated analysts singled out the Republicans for cynical or
hardball tactics on 28 separate occasions. On another twelve
occasions, the network personalities complained that committee Democrats
went too easy on Thomas. (On two occasions, CBS vaguely blamed
both parties, calling the hearings "smear and counter-smear,"
for example.) No anchor or reporter deplored the likelihood that
the Democrats leaked in an effort to stop Thomas at all costs.
In fact, they praised leaks (despite the damage they may cause)
as an "all-American institution," in the words of PBS anchor
Paul Duke.

During a break in the hearings on October 12, Dan Rather
asked: "Would you agree, or would you not agree, that one
person's leak is another person's public service?" On the same
day, Nina Totenberg insisted that "the history books are full of
important and historic events that were the result of news leaks....
[Watergate] would have just been a third-rate robbery if there
hadn't been a lot of leaks disclosing what it had all been
about. So, news leaks -- I don't want to be defensive about this
-- but news leaks aren't always bad."

When Senator Paul Simon appeared on Meet the Press
October 13, reporter Andrea Mitchell went on the attack, but not
about the leak: "Now you just mentioned that Anita Hill was
under attack for most of yesterday and you lamented that. But it was the
Democrats who failed to question Judge Thomas very aggressively
about some issues that might have been relevant. For instance,
pornography. One of his friends from Yale, Lovida Coleman, a
very close friend, has said that he liked to tell stories about
pornographic films....Why was that question not asked?"

During an October 14 Today roundtable discussion, NBC News
Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert exemplified the attack on
Republicans: "You had Senators accusing people of perjury;
Senator Simpson, `I have faxes, I have letters' -- the closest
thing to McCarthy that we've seen. It was not a kinder, gentler
Republican panel." On Today the next morning, Andrea
Mitchell complained about Thomas: "The Democrats did not ask him
tough questions about the facts of her charge and they did, the
Republicans did a great job of hammering her. It's basically what
happened in the '88 campaign. The Republicans know how to fight
dirty."

With the exception of two occasions on Nightline, ABC
refrained from making such judgments in all of its hearings
coverage. Ted Koppel mouthed the media line on October 15: "The
reality that Judge Thomas is tonight Justice Thomas can be attributed in
large measure to the fact that his supporters used some
hardball tactics of their own." In contrast, Koppel asserted the
Democrats "were largely ineffectual counter-punchers."

NewsBites: Please Tax Us

PLEASE TAX US. Citizens Against Government Waste declared
October 19 "Taxpayer Action Day." NBC's reaction? Assert that
taxes are just too low. As Nightly News drew to a close,
anchor Garrick Utley announced: "American tax rates today are,
relatively speaking, low. Repeat low. About half the top rate in
the rest of the industrialized world. Our sales taxes are
equally low. Fact: the United States is a tax bargain, believe
it or not."

Utley urged Americans to follow Europe by becoming more
reliant upon government: "The difference, of course, is that in
other countries people see their tax money coming back to them
to make life more agreeable and secure. In Western Europe, health
care for everyone. In Scandinavia, day care centers for mothers and
children." Too bad he didn't mention that Sweden just threw out
its socialist government.

BEHIND THE TIMES AT TIME. Last year, MediaWatch pointed out that at Time,
which talks a good game about women's rights and promoting
working women, only 12 of the top 47 editorial jobs are held by
women. In the midst of self-righteous indignation at sexual
harassment in Time's pages, the New York Post reported that Time Deputy Chief of Correspondents Joelle Attinger collected stories from female Time staffers about sexual harassment.

But after receiving a number of reports about one high-ranking Time employee, the piece was spiked. One source told the Post
"it was a silly idea to air our own dirty laundry." The source
said sexual harassment may have been "rampant in the past. It's
not so much a problem now." Rather, "The real problem we have
here is sex discrimination. There's a pervasive atmosphere of
discrimination here." Sounds like a topic for Time's feminist essayist, Barbara Ehrenreich of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DISTRIBUTING DUNCE CAPS. This should win an award for the dumbest story of the year. In an October 8 CBS Evening News story, reporter Bob McNamara used public confusion about abortion laws as an argument against overturning Roe v. Wade. "It could be the future in all fifty states if Roe v. Wade
is overturned," he surmised, "abortion, legal in some places,
illegal in others. A state of confusion that's already
happening....[Doctor] Jackson says that confusion over the law has
endangered patients."

Some women, he warned, take desperate measures to end
pregnancies, like drinking cleaning fluids or quinine. "In rural
Utah...questions over whether abortion is legal have led some
women to try ending a pregnancy themselves," he claimed.
McNamara ended his story by putting the blame on legislatures for even
considering anti-abortion laws: "And if there are victims already
in this battle for the future of abortion, they are casualties
mostly of confusion."

FAYE'S FREE RIDE. ABC reporter Sylvia Chase offered
the latest glorifying profile of Planned Parenthood President
Faye Wattleton on Prime Time Live September 5. But unlike other
media tributes, Chase brought up Margaret Sanger: "In 1916 when
Planned Parenthood was established, founder Margaret Sanger was
jailed for speaking about contraception. Today, Faye Wattleton
is worried that history is repeating itself."

But Chase ignored a more substantial angle. Not once did
Chase ask Wattleton how she, as a black woman, could preside
over a group founded by a woman who said birth control was
needed "to create a race of thoroughbreds." Sanger advised
Planned Parenthood to "hire three or four colored ministers,
preferably with social service backgrounds and engaging
personalities....We do not want word to go out that we want to
exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can
straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more
rebellious members."

DESPERATELY SNEAKING SUSAN. Susan Estrich popped up as
an expert on sexual harassment in several stories during the
Thomas hearings. On the October 8 NBC Nightly News, she was labeled a "law professor." In the October 28 Time, it was "University of Southern California law professor." Only ABC, in appearances on Nightline and Good Morning America, described her partisan credentials as 1988 Campaign Manager for Michael Dukakis.

TEAM TALBOTT. Time Editor-at-Large Strobe Talbott, who
in January of 1990 claimed Gorbachev proved "the Soviet threat
isn't what it used to be -- and what's more, that it never was,"
is at it again. In an October 14 essay on Robert Gates' CIA
nomination, Talbott charged that in 1976, CIA Director George
Bush requested an outside "Team B" report on the Soviets which
was "a depiction of Soviet intentions and capabilities that
seemed extreme at the time and looks ludicrous in retrospect."

Earlier in the essay, Talbott conclude that "Gates'
supporters on the committee -- all Republicans -- tried with
more ingenuity than success to discredit the most damaging
testimony. Gates then put up a spirited, gutsy defense of his own,
earning respect from several Senators -- all Democrats -- who will
still probably vote against his confirmation." At the time
Senator David Boren (D-OK), the Intelligence Committee chairman,
had already announced his support for Gates, who ended winning
the committee vote 11-4, with four Democrats voting in favor.
Perhaps Time needs a Team B essayist for future predictions.

COMPLIMENTING CLINTON. Is NBC reporter Lisa Myers objective? You make the call. In one of a series of Nightly News
reports on Democratic candidates, Myers heralded Arkansas
Governor Bill Clinton on October 3: "His prescription -- an
ambitious agenda to make government work and help the forgotten
middle class...A star since first elected Governor at age
thirty-two, Clinton is less driven by ideology than by what works...Name
a problem, Clinton probably has a solution."

Earlier, on the September 12 Today, Myers claimed:
"Clinton has racked up a fairly strong record in eleven years as
Governor. This year fellow Governors voted him the most
effective Governor in the nation. His claim to fame, education...Clinton
increased school attendance requirements, raised accreditation
standards and required teachers to pass competency tests, over
the vehement objections of the teacher's union. Then he raised
taxes to pay for it all, including higher salaries for teachers.
It worked."

SCORCHED TAXPAYERS. One reporter is actually blaming the Oakland fires on low taxes. In an October 27 Philadelphia Inquirer
story, Knight-Ridder reporter David Johnston asked: "If $12,000
in overtime pay might have saved Oakland's hills, is it time to
rethink the tax revolt?"

"The idea that paying too much in taxes can hurt, but that
not paying enough can kill, has begun to seep into the political
consciousness here," Johnston observed before charging the
future fire "threat is magnified because many fire departments
are underfunded and underequipped." Why? "The modern tax revolt
began here in 1978, when Proposition 13 slashed property taxes.
Since then there have been severe cuts in local government
services."

The fact is California localities are hardly strapped for
cash. The California Taxpayers Association reported last month
that local discretionary levies, such as business license fees
and utility and hotel taxes, have soared 298 percent since Prop. 13
and property tax collections have grown faster than inflation every
year since 1982. The Los Angeles Times offered a better culprit: incompetence. On November 1 the Times reported "officials were slow in asking for aerial support" and "offers from state firefighters were ignored."

TAKING AIM AT GUNS. The Killeen, Texas mass murder tragedy prompted some opinionated assertions from CBS News. On the October 16 Evening News,
Dan Rather asked reporter Richard Threlkeld, "Is Congress going
to do anything to limit these assault weapons, and if so,
what?" Threlkeld answered, "We hope so. Tomorrow, Congress will
vote on the crime bill which includes a feature to limit the
sale, or manufacture, or importation of some semi-automatic
weapons." On October 23 Dan Rather led off a story on the
aftermath of Killeen with this bit of blame transference: "The
shootings in Killeen are the latest tragedy highlighting the
success of the gun lobby at fighting gun control."

SCAMMING SAM. With sexual harassment the issue of the
month, at least one male network reporter was clearly nervous
that he might fall out of liberal favor. On This Week with David Brinkley
October 13, ABC attack dog Sam Donaldson got this surprise from
Barbara Walters: "Sam, if I wanted to, I could have such a list
of sexual harassment against you." A sheepish Sam replied: "I
can tell you I've never done anything that Judge Thomas is
accused of, but have I walked through the news room kind of
uh-huh uh-huh? Sure." He later repented: "I think from now on,
though, I'm probably going to go uh-huh uh-huh [whispered]."

One who wasn't nervous, ironically, was NBC commentator John Chancellor. On the October 8 Nightly News
he warned: "The biggest lesson of all is that these days women take
it very seriously when they're not taken seriously." He should
know. In her book Fighting For Air, former NBC reporter Liz
Trotta wrote that Chancellor once signed a petition to keep women
out of his social club because they would "break down the
effortless, unconstrained companionship among men." Trotta, who
described several run-ins with a chauvinistic Chancellor, was
amused. "I still believe that men have a perfect right to their
own clubs, but it was a tonic to watch Chancellor's liberal
credentials up for grabs."

FACTS ON BLACKS. Despite the polls showing strong
black support for Clarence Thomas, NBC News portrayed the
opposite. On October 10, the night before the special hearings,
NBC reporter Deborah Roberts stated: "There is little sympathy
for Clarence Thomas' trouble. After all, many black leaders here
never embraced his nomination...Today, at all-black Morehouse
College, they debated Thomas' stand against affirmative action. In this
classroom, there will be no feeling of loss if he loses the
nomination."

Really? What about the rest of the country? On October 14, USA Today's
poll reported 63 percent of blacks supported confirmation for
Thomas, while only 18 percent were opposed. In the same poll, 47
percent of blacks believed Thomas was telling the truth,
compared to 20 percent who believed Anita Hill. Likewise, a Los Angeles Times poll found 61 percent supported Thomas and an ABC News-Washington Post poll found 70 percent wanted Thomas confirmed.

BALANCE IS BORING. Who says journalists should be balanced and fair in their reporting? Not Newsweek
media critic Jonathan Alter, who apparently prefers editorializing over
news reporting. In an October 28 column on the press coverage
of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill story, Alter wrote: "At The New York Times,
Maureen Dowd, framing the story while the competition slept,
scored a series of analytical scoops on the unfairness of the Senate to
women and to Anita Hill...But inside the Times and out,
just-the-facts-ma'am mossbacks grumbled that `editorials' were
appearing on the front page. Their bumper sticker should be:
KEEP THE TIMES BORING."

STILL WAITING. On Nightline's October 16 two-hour special on the Thomas hearings, MediaWatch
Publisher L. Brent Bozell asked Ted Koppel if he would allocate the
same zeal to investigating the Senate's leak of a confidential
FBI report on Anita Hill as he has to "October Surprise"
charges. Koppel responded: "I'll be happy to talk to you by
phone tomorrow morning if you'd like to." Despite two phone
calls and one faxed letter, Koppel has not responded.

Revolving
Door: Adding from Harvard Yard

Adding from Harvard Yard. Last summer American University professor Lewis Wolfson completed a report titled Through the Revolving Door: Blurring the Line Between the Press and Government.
During his research for Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Barone
Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, Wolfson uncovered
five names previously unknown to MediaWatch:

Ed Goodpaster, Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for the Baltimore Sun
from 1982 to 1987 and National Editor since then, held the
title of Associate Director of the Office of Governmental and
Public Affairs at the Agriculture Department from 1978-80.
Before joining the Carter Administration, Goodpaster was Deputy
National Editor at The Washington Post, a position he assumed in 1974 after nine years as Deputy Washington Bureau Chief for Time.

Lawrence O'Rourke has been White House correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
since leaving the Carter Administration in 1981. During Carter's last
year in office, O'Rourke served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Education for Policy and Planning. Before jumping to the new
agency, O'Rourke reported White House news for The Bulletin, a now defunct Philadelphia daily.

Veteran Time correspondent Jerrold Schecter was
the magazine's diplomatic correspondent when tapped for the
National Security Council's Press Secretary slot in 1977, a
position he held through 1980. In 1989 he and his wife wrote An American Family Returns to Moscow, a book comparing life under Gorbachev to the late 1960s when he served as Time Moscow Bureau Chief. Earlier this year he translated Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes.

Walter Pincus, a defense reporter at The Washington Post,
put in two 18-month stints as an investigator for the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee under Democratic Chairman William
Fulbright. Pincus told MediaWatch he first worked for the
committee in 1962, returning in 1969 when Fulbright asked him to
investigate the role of the military in foreign policy. After
three years as Executive Editor of The New Republic, in 1975 he joined the Post. For several years he simultaneously worked for CBS News, serving as a producer/writer for CBS Reports: The Defense of the United States, a five-part 1981 series.

Wolfson's paper also identified a Reagan connection. In 1981 Dean Fischer left his position as Time Deputy Washington Bureau Chief to become Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under Alexander Haig. Back at Time as its Cairo reporter since 1986, he joined a PR firm when Haig resigned in 1982.

MediaWatch recently came across a Carter alumnus whom Wolfson overlooked: Arch Parsons, a Baltimore Sun
Washington bureau reporter since 1987. Parsons held three
positions during Carter's first two years: Director of
Information for the Appalachian Mountain Commission; Assistant
Secretary for Public Affairs at HUD; and finally Director of
Public Affairs for the Economic Development Administration at the
Department of Commerce. Parsons left government in 1978 for an
assistant editor slot at Newsday, followed by a stint at The Washington Star until it folded in 1981.

Nightline and Frontline Caught in Hoax

"OCTOBER SURPRISE" UNRAVELS

The credibility of investigative reports touting an "October
Surprise" scandal -- that in 1980, Reagan campaign officials
negotiated to delay the release of the Iranian hostages until
after the election -- has been destroyed by the November 11 Newsweek and the November 18 New Republic.

The exposés, by Stephen Emerson and Jesse Furman in The New Republic and by a team led by John Barry in Newsweek,
reviewed the charges made by primary sources of the "October
Surprise" theory, including Richard Brenneke, Houshang Lavi,
Barbara Honegger, Ari Ben-Menashe, and Jamshid Hashemi, and
found them baseless.

Emerson and Furman reported that in the last four years, ABC
"ran a series of 'investigative' stories based on new Brenneke
accusations," citing a "confidential source" (Brenneke) making
allegations such as "the United States, working with Israeli
intelligence, secretly flew weapons to the contras and used the planes on their way back to transport drugs into the United States."

Despite stories like these, ABC issued no public retraction when Frank Snepp, who according to The New Republic, "reported Brenneke's allegations as truthful for ABC News for several years," wrote in the Village Voice
that Brenneke's "October Surprise" claims were false. Yet
knowing that Brenneke and Ari Ben-Menashe were untrustworthy (Newsweek
reported that Ben-Menashe failed an ABC lie-detector test in November
1990), ABC left them out of the picture and based an entire
one-hour June 20 Nightline this year on the testimony of
Jamshid Hashemi. Emerson and Furman detailed how Hashemi's
credibility problems were "even worse than those of Brenneke and
Ben-Menashe."

ABC's unwillingness to show skepticism toward this conspiracy theory is also proven by the fact that Nightline
chose not to air conservative journalists such as Herbert Romerstein,
who correctly challenged the veracity of these sources earlier
this year in debunking a PBS Frontline documentary for Human Events.

On the Fox Morning News November 5, Emerson, a former U.S. News & World Report
writer and investigator for Sen. Frank Church, called the
"October Surprise" theory "probably one of the largest hoaxes
and fabrications in modern American journalism...I was amazed
that in the last five years, no one bothered to look at the
statements of the sources. I mean, each one totally contradicted
the other. None of them had any documentation whatsoever. So I
still question why major American institutions, journalistic
institutions, accepted on face value the statements of these
fabricated sources."

The Court's Future

THE COURT'S FUTURE. The addition of Clarence Thomas is making reporters glum about the Supreme Court's future. On the October 7 NBC Nightly News,
reporter Lisa Myers sounded the alarm: "Given the Court's
increasingly conservative makeup, it also could end the era in which
the Court has led the fight against racial injustice in this
country."

CBS reporter Rita Braver framed the issues from the liberal perspective on the October 15 Evening News:
"Ultraconservatives William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia
usually draw enough of the Court's other conservatives to form a
majority. But not always. The addition of Clarence Thomas,
however, makes it even more likely that in the near future the
Supreme Court will ease requirements for school desegregation,
cut back on affirmative action programs and other protections
for minorities and women, get tougher with reporters in freedom
of speech cases, further crack down on the rights of accused in
criminal cases, and overturn the basic right to abortion."

Reporter or Campaign Strategist?

BUSH BULL & HARKIN HYPE

It's not uncommon for reporters to become flacks or
operatives for liberal candidates, but usually they wait until
after they leave their network or paper. Not Boston Globe reporter John Powers. For the October 6 Globe Magazine,
Powers wrote the cover story, "To: The Democratic Party, Re:
Winning -- for a Change," a mean-spirited diatribe. He began
with a series of cheap shots: "The Republicans will cheat to
hang on to the White House, even if they think they have the
election in the bag...The Republicans will distort, too.
Remember Willie Horton, Bush's [Boston] harbor cruise?"

Powers urged Democrats to "shake the American people by the
shoulders and tell them the truth. That life in the USA isn't
getting better for most of them. It's getting worse -- and it's
George Bush's fault." Later, he advised: "Whack away at Bush
every day, and make it personal. You know what drives him crazy.
The W word. As in wimp." More strategy from Powers:

"The country is going nowhere while George Bush's friends are
living off their windfalls from the `greed is good' days. Make
that your campaign centerpiece -- public distaste for the '80s
is real. Bush spent those years in the White House, worshiping
debt and calling it growth. Bush made Dukakis wear Willie Horton. You
can hang Mike Milken around his neck. Both felons, right? And who
did more harm to America?"

"You have to get people thinking that the '90s are the '30s
revisited -- and blame it on Republican greed...You can make a
strong case that the Republicans, who've been in power for 18 of
the last 22 years, have knocked the working man and woman back
into the 1950s."

"You don't have a Roosevelt or a John F. Kennedy out there,
but you do have the makings of a Harry Truman in Tom Harkin, the
Senator from Iowa....Harkin uttered the most memorable
political lin of the year at Wisconsin's June Democratic
convention, `George Bush and his fat-cat Republican friends say they are
building a Conservative Opportunity Society. I've got a one
word reply: Bullshit.' If Harkin will say that inside the
sanitized fishbowl that American politics has become, he'll say a
lot more. Plain talk for hard times."

Powers found nothing wrong with a reporter becoming a partisan advocate, telling MediaWatch that readers expect opinions in the magazine. As for why the Globe
doesn't employ any conservatives who could offer a contrary view, he
sarcastically claimed that executives can't locate any
"literate" ones, suggesting that Globe Publisher Bill Taylor cannot "find a conservative who can put a complete sentence together."

Media Money Leans
Left

$ Against Thomas

Where did the liberal interest groups besmirching Clarence
Thomas get their money? Some of it came from media companies and
foundations. Most of the top dogs have given money to NOW's
Legal Defense and Education Fund: ABC, CBS, NBC, General Electric,
Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., the New York Times Company and the
Washington Post Company. (NBC donated to NOW's legal fund as NOW
was suing them for discrimination.)

The Philip L. Graham Fund, operated mostly by heirs and employees of The Washington Post,
gives yearly to the Women's Legal Defense Fund. The Capital
Cities/ABC Foundation has given to a feminist group called the
Women's Action Alliance. Planned Parenthood is funded by the
Times Mirror Foundation (owners of the Los Angeles Times),
the New York Times Company Foundation, the Gannett Foundation,
the Cowles Media Foundation, the Cowles Media Foundation (owners
of the Minneapolis Star Tribune), and the Knight (as in Knight-Ridder) Foundation.

The NAACP, which ended up opposing Thomas, has an impressive
roster of media donors: the Times Mirror Foundation, the New
York Times Company Foundation, the Boston Globe Foundation,
Philip L. Graham Fund, General Electric Foundation, Gannett
Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the Hearst Foundations.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which
bragged of dragging down Robert Bork in its 1988 annual report,
is funded by the Philip L. Graham Fund and the Boston Globe
Foundation. People for the American Way is supported by CBS and the
Washington Post Company.

Once in Love with Nina

ONCE IN LOVE WITH NINA. Nina Totenberg's media groupies continue to celebrate The Leak. On ABC's Prime Time Live
November 7, Diane Sawyer jawed that Totenberg "inspire[s]
respect." After reviewing Nina's feud with Alan Simpson, Sawyer
ended with a flourish: "Senator Simpson sent word to us for this
broadcast that he thinks Nina Totenberg is a fine journalist
who was just doing her job." Sawyer didn't mention that
Totenberg was charged with plagiarism by The Wall Street Journal.

Journal Washington Bureau Chief Al Hunt responded to a loving October 10 profile by Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz. Instead of investigating her story, Kurtz simply forwarded Totenberg's tale of leaving the National Observer
in the 1970s because of sexual harassment. A week later, Hunt
claimed that Totenberg did not leave, but was fired for
plagiarizing the Post in 1972. Totenberg's response: "What I did
or didn't do almost 20 years ago isn't the issue." Kurtz has yet
to report these charges, despite his regular reporting on other
incidents of plagiarism.

For those who wonder how Totenberg's prodding of Anita Hill
affected her PBS commentary during the hearings, we present the
Totenberg Tote Board. Number of times Nina defended herself over
the leak: four. Number of times Nina wondered whether liberal interest groups would get a fair hearing from Thomas: three. Number of times Nina downplayed or audibly giggled at John Doggett's testimony: three. Number of times Nina promoted Hill's panel of witnesses as important or damaging to Thomas: eight.
Totenberg ended her Sunday hearing analysis by saying: "By and
large, I'd say the big news of today was the very first panel of
the day, those who were corroborative witnesses for Anita
Hill."

Print Reporters Too

Just like their electronic colleagues, many newspaper and
magazine reporters accused Republicans of playing dirty and the
Democrats of being too nice:

"Just as they did in the 1988 campaign, the Republicans
battered the other side by going ugly early with nasty, personal
attacks, by successfully linking the Democrats with liberal
advocacy groups and by using volatile images of race." -- New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd in a page 1 news story, October 15.

"The White House went into those hearings with a clear
strategy: they were going to get Clarence Thomas confirmed. And
the Democrats came in, having been under a lot of heavy
criticism for trying to cover up this whole story or whitewash it, and
they said `we're going to be the seekers of the truth.' And so,
Clarence Thomas has lawyers sitting on that committee who were
working for him, and Anita Hill didn't have any, and in the end,
the strategy worked for the Republicans." -- U.S. News & World Report Asst. Managing Ed. Gloria Borger, Oct. 18 Washington Week in Review on PBS.

"The lowest point on the first day of the hearing came when
Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter implied that Hill had
simply fantasized Thomas' asking for dates and his lurid remarks
about pornography. It is all but inconceivable that a similarly
qualified man, black or white, would be accused not merely of lying but
of imagining things." -- Time Senior Editor Jack E. White, October 21 issue.

"The days of Simpson Chic are over. Now he is more often
compared to Red-baiter Joe McCarthy. The image of Simpson
flinging open his jacket and declaring he had lots of `stuff'
against Anita Hill -- while revealing nothing -- was the lowest of many
low points in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Any Senator with a
sense of history should have said, as attorney Joseph Welch
eventually did to McCarthy, `Senator, have you no shame?'
....[Simpson] is writing a book about the media -- a little like
Stalin discussing intergovernmental relations." -- Newsweek Washington reporter Eleanor Clift, October 28 news story.

Janet Cooke Award:
L.A. Times: Savage Attack on Rehnquist

The furor over the Thomas nomination may subside, but many
legal reporters will probably continue to paint the conservative
Court with broad brush strokes of disdain. On September 29,
before the Thomas hearings ended, the Los Angeles Times Magazine published a cover story on Chief Justice William Rehnquist by Times
Supreme Court reporter David Savage. For oversimplifying Rehnquist's
opinions into a frightening platform against civil rights and the
interests of minorities, Savage earned the November Janet Cooke
Award.

The Times led off their scare with the subheadline:
"Bill Rehnquist was once considered an extremist. Now his views
almost always become the law of the land." This didn't describe
Rehnquist's views -- it just makes them sound scary.

Like too many of the major media's Supreme Court reporters,
Savage wrote his story in a simplistic shorthand that assigns
liberals the white hats and conservatives the black hats:
liberals as the defenders of individual rights, conservatives as
the defenders of government power. Some examples:

"...vintage Rehnquist. He upheld the powers of the government
and dismissed any claims that it has special responsibilities
toward the poor."

"No other member of the court in recent decades had been as
faithful in backing the government. No other justice so
regularly turned thumbs down when individuals contended their
constitutional rights had been violated."

"Throughout its history, the justices had erred, [Rehnquist]
said, when they sought to protect individual rights."

"Souter was a conservative picked for the Court because the
Bush Administration believed he could be trusted to uphold the
government most of the time."

Savage put the opposite spin on the liberal justices:

"Somehow, year after year, despite a procession of new
Republican appointees, Brennan managed to piece together five-
vote majorities to rule in favor of civil right and civil
liberties."

Thurgood Marshall was described as "the retiring giant of civil-rights law."

Lewis Powell would "vote with the liberals on civil rights and civil liberties."

Savage summarized: "Under Rehnquist, the Supreme Court no
longer sees itself as the defender of civil rights and civil
liberties, the champion of the individual. Gone is the court
majority that breathed new life into the Bill of Rights, dismantled
Southern segregation, disciplined police who violated the rights of
citizens, removed religion from the public schools, pushed a
President into resignation and swept aside the laws forbidding
women to end their pregnancies."

But if Savage had quoted any conservatives in his article (he
did not), they could have composed an opposing list of liberal
infringements on individual rights. Savage might have at least
presented the issue with more subtlety: that often, the Court
must decide between a conflict of declared rights between
individuals, like the rights of criminals vs. the rights of crime
victims; the rights of employers vs. the rights of job applicants; or
the rights of homeowners vs. the rights of environmentalists to
declare other people's property wetlands.

But in describing the Supreme Court that found parts of the
New Deal unconstitutional, Savage downplayed the importance of
economic liberties: "For liberals such as Brennan and the late
William O. Douglas, the lesson to be drawn from the era of the
discredited nine old men was that the court must protect civil rights
and individual liberties, not economic and property rights."
Savage admitted in the next sentence: "Nothing in the
Constitution or its history necessarily endorses such a
distinction, but that has been the prevailing consensus since
the 1940s."

In a lengthy and courteous interview with MediaWatch, Savage agreed that constitutional rights are not to be selectively enforce, and that economic rights are
civil rights: "I agree with that. That's a good point. You ought to
argue that with Rehnquist, though. I don't see much sign that this
Court cares about economic rights or economic liberties."

Former Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland told MediaWatch
the problem isn't just "result-oriented" judging, but
result-oriented reporting of judges. Rather than explain the
many details of the precedents and technicalities on which
justices base their decisions, reporters simplistically suggest
evil intent, such as the court ruled "against" minorities, or as
Savage wrote, that Rehnquist "fought against equal rights for
women but for the rights of white males who claimed to be
victims of affirmative action."

Savage devoted 11 paragraphs to the thesis of liberal law
professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who has fiercely criticized the
Bork and Thomas nominations in the press. Savage cited
Chemerinsky's 1989 Harvard Law Review article that "showed
that the chief justice almost never votes to strike down laws --
unless the laws happen to benefit minorities or women."

One case in which Rehnquist and the Court overturned precedent was the 1989 Wards Cove
decision on unintentional discrimination. Conservatives ruled
in favor of the original text of Title VII of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act, which explicitly prohibits racial preferences like
quotas. To be consistent, Savage would have to argue that the
original Civil Rights Act is harmful to blacks' individual
rights. But Savage conceded to MediaWatch that in cases like Wards Cove,
the conservatives are ruling for individual rights, not the
liberals: "I don't have any disagreement with that. I think
that's probably correct."

Savage's story also simplified the Court's treatment of
religion: "With an unquestioned majority, Rehnquist may move
aggressively to throw out established doctrines of
constitutional law. For example, Rehnquist has long disputed Thomas
Jefferson's view that the Constitution demands a `separation of
church and state.'" Savage didn't explain that the phrase
"separation of church and state" appears nowhere in the
Constitution, but comes from an 1802 letter that has been
transposed into constitutional law by liberal justices.

No matter how much legal reporters decry the "dumbing down"
of the Supreme Court, the President has a long way to go to
match the dumbing down of Supreme Court reporting. Boiling down
incredibly complex interpretations of the law into
understandable news copy is a tremendous challenge. But stories like
Savage's aren't balanced depictions of the Supreme Court's
deliberations; they're politically motivated caricature.

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